Histories of the Clan
by Joey Taylor
Summary: Clanverse Oneshot. Hermione's notes so far on the events that had led up to this point. From beginning of the fannon to the middle of Millennium.


When Hermione had first considered writing the family history of the Domino Clan so they'd have a better idea of what Shadow Magic was - what it could do, who could wield it and who was likely to be angered by it - she'd hadn't expected to gather this many notes in forty eight hours.

She'd struggled on where to start from. There were many points along the time line that were suitable as a 'beginning' and finally she'd started by writing down the names of the Clan members she knew about, along with their birthdays (with the obvious exception of those born B.C.) and worked her way up from there.

She was rather glad of the laptop Seto had given her when he'd discovered what she was up to. He told her that she'd need it if she really planned on doing this - unless she planned on carrying hundreds of notebooks around for the foreseeable future, at any rate. She'd looked through her notebooks from before she'd had it, and she had been crossing things through and writing notes in the margins and generally having a hell of a time trying to work out what notes related to what thing.

Now she had a rough time line, including events like Harry defeating Voldemort as a baby by reflecting a killing curse back at the Dark Lord, Yugi completing the Puzzle at fourteen years old, defeating Pegasus, meeting Rebecca, beating Duke, Marik's appearance, Serenity's operation, Battle City, beating Marik... there was a substantial amount of data to add before Yugi and his friends had even heard of Kari, yet alone Hogwarts.

Hermione had gotten her Hogwarts letter and been introduced to magic that September.

And then of course, three years and several months after Yugi had competed the Puzzle, they'd run into Kari at a Duel Monsters tournament and added another member to the Japanese group. Initiated by right of backing Joey up against his old gang before earning her way into the tournament's finals and defeating a Chinese Wizard named Xuan who had imitated Shadow Games in order to throw his opponents off. He had wanted the Millennium Puzzle, and by risking her life to stop him Kari had become a firm friend of the group almost overnight.

And Ombre had come along a month later. Bound to the Orb of Light that Kari's best friend, the seer Robyn Golden had sent as a Christmas present in an attempt to protect her from the Shadows that pervaded Domino far too often, Ombre had awakened just a few days later. Though at the time she had had no memories, she had been unquestionably loyal to her better half, though, it had eventually turned out that the two of them weren't 'yami' and 'hikari' in the same manner as Yugi and the Pharoah.

The next important event was when the group received their Hogwarts letters. Ron had gotten his early in March, Harry was next (she had recorded the events involving the owls and the hundreds of letters and the island where Hagrid had broken down the door) and finally Yugi and the gang.

No one could explain why they had left Japan to go to Hogwarts, leaving their friends behind with barely a word - it seemed out of character for her friends, especially Yugi. They just had felt that they had to, but didn't know why.

Hermione had a few ideas (several of which included compulsion charms) but wasn't going to bring them up in front of the others in case it caused a Headmaster Hunt.

The first year Mokuba hadn't been old enough to go to Hogwarts, so it had just been Yugi, Joey, Kari, Ryou and Seto (with their assorted alter-egos) who had received an invite to the school. Not even Seto had turned the offer down, even though the CEO of Kaiba Corp had, at that point, claimed to disbelieve in magic. Mokuba had confided in her that it wasn't that Seto was actually oblivious, as he had claimed. It was that Seto had considered magic cheating and refused to acknowledge it, a topic that Hermione would have questioned the Ravenclaw on had Mokuba not made her promise not to say anything about it to Seto.

So they had gone to England with Professor Dumbledore and started at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where they had met Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Yugi and Harry's friendship had sparked quite early in their first year, and from there the friendship with Ron had developed, while Kari (a workaholic by nature who would have fitted better in Hufflepuff than Gryffindor) had become friends with Hermione, and of course with that came a friendship with the others, though Ron hadn't liked the 'Know-It-All Brigade' that had consisted of Kari, Hermione and, by default, Ombre (as the spirit knew everything Kari did).

It had been obvious to everyone who had bothered to look that something had been strange about the 'transfer students', especially the three item wielders. It had all been speculation until Halloween, when Ron and Harry had confirmed that the foreigners were possessed during the fight against the troll in the girl's bathroom that had cemented the two groups friendship. Hermione, being Hermione, had known long before then having gone to Kari quite early in the year and simply asked.

Not that it had become important once the accident at the lake had given the dark-halves their own bodies. The day before Harry's first Quidditch game had seen Bakura start a fight by the lake, which had only come to an end because the spells cast by Bakura using the Ring, Ombre using the Orb, and Joey using his wand, had disagreed with each other in a rather violent manner and had a rather odd side effect.

After that the darks had been Sorted and fixed up with books, dorm space and identities.

It had also been around that time when they'd started thinking that Snape was the one after whatever the Hagrid's three-headed dog Fluffy had been guarding.

That had come after Christmas, during which Harry had discovered the Mirror of Erised, which showed the deepest desire of the person looking into it, and received his father's invisibility cloak as a Christmas present from Professor Dumbledore.

Folloing a tip-off from Hagrid, they had been looking for information on Nicholas Flamel for a couple of months when Kaiba had found the information they needed on the back of a Chocolate Frog card. From a huge text book that Hermione had taken out of the library weeks before, they had worked out that Fluffy was guarding the Philosopher's Stone.

After a Quidditch match, a brawl with Bakura and Draco Malfoy (Bakura hadn't been taking in by the Malfoy family yet, she remembered to note) and an altercation between Snape and Quirrell later, Hagrid had managed to get his hands on a dragon egg.

She wasn't sure whether to include that little fact in the time line or not. It was, after all, illegal to raise dragons, but both Joey and Kaiba had been besotted with the creature, a Hungarian Horntail by the name of Norbert (or as it turned out later, Norberta), and it would be rather hypocritical of her to not include Norbert when she would be including Kisara and Tobias's hatchlings... Maybe it would be best to not say what it was and just mention Hagrid hatched another of his cute, cuddly, deadly and potentially dangerous pets…

The fall out from Norberta had been detention in the Forbidden Forest, where Bakura had attempted to Shadow Game Kari, and Harry had had his first real run in with Voldemort since he'd been a baby. They had spent the entire exam period worried that Voldemort was going to break into the castle and take the stone, only to find out on the day of their last exam that Hagrid had told some complete stranger how to get past Fluffy in exchange for the dragon egg and that the Headmaster had left for London.

Leaving the school wide open for an invasion.

Yugi and Kari had stuck around the entrance to the third floor corridor where Fluffy lived, keeping an eye out for Snape while the others had tried to find Dumbledore or warn another teacher, only for the pair of them to end up kidnapped by the real villain.

This, of course, had meant that they'd had to go rescue them.

They'd charmed, tricked, figured and flown their way past the various protections only to discover that their enemy was the last person on their minds.

It was Quirrell. At the time of them entering the room, Kari had been conscious but tied up and Quirrell had had Yugi by the hair in front of the Mirror of Erised, his hands bound and Quirrell's wand at his back.

Well that situation hadn't lasted very long, if what she'd been told was anything to go by. Yami hadn't liked the fact Quirrell was threatening his hikari and had blasted the man across the room, freeing Yugi, who had quickly rushed over and had his hands untied, and giving Harry and opportunity to untie Kari.

And then her notes on what had happened, during the ensuing fight with the Professor, who was possessed by He-Who-Must-Be-Named, were sketchy at best. As far as she could work out, Quirrell had Stunned Yami and somehow frozen Yugi and Kari on the spot, while trying to convince Harry to give him the stone. When that had failed, Voldemort had tried to use Quirrell to kill Harry...

And Quirrell had died because of it.

Somehow Kari had been Stunned and Quirrell had died and Voldemort, needing a new host, had tried to possess Yugi. He had nearly destroyed Yugi's soul when the hikari had refused to surrender control of his body easily. Only the timely arrival of the Pharaoh, who had woken up as Voldemort had entered Yugi's body, had prevented the teen's death.

As it was, both Harry and Yugi had required substantial stays in the Hospital Wing. It had taken Yugi weeks to recover from the injuries his soul had sustained in its fight with the Dark Lord.

And that had only been their first year.

She could see why Seto had given her the laptop now.

Then it had been the summer holidays and apparently, though she hadn't been told much about it yet, there had been another Duel Monsters Tournament. This time held by some games company no one had heard of until that point on some island in the middle of nowhere. Once again her friends had nearly lost their souls, this time against to guy who had been wielding the 'Legendary Demons'.

Not forgetting the Kaiba Corp tournament a few weeks later where there had been a Veela (or possibly half-Veela) competing who had charmed Yami into defeat but failed to cast her spell over a firmly heterosexual Kari. Ombre had lost her soul in a duel against Bakura, only for Yugi to win it back and Kari had won it over all by striking Yugi's life points directly rather than by going through his God cards.

That wasn't even the half of it. During that tournament there had been another mishap with mixing the magics and every 'Shadow' Duelist there had been joined by the Duel Monster in their deck they trusted the most.

Which was when the group had met their partner monsters, leading to an incident between Seto's Blue-eyes and Joey's Red-eyes that neither man would acknowledge, but resulted in the female dragon clutching shortly thereafter. Hermione had her suspicions.

Then it had been back to Diagon Alley, where they had met with the English group, been introduced to a 'hero' in the celebrity Gilderoy Lockhart and gotten into an altercation with Lucius Malfoy that had ended with Seto threatening to call in every single debt that Lucius owed his various benefactors, if not bankrupting the Pure-Blood then certainly making a huge dent in his fortunes.

Then on the way back to school for the new term, Harry, Ron and Joey had been trapped outside the barrier at King's Cross, necessitating their use of Mr. Weasley's flying car to get to Hogwarts.

A disagreement with Snape, a couple of Howlers, an introduction to Cornish Pixies, and some Quidditch trials later, Yugi had earned his place on the Gryffindor team as a reserve Chaser and there had been yet another row with the younger Malfoy, this time over the way he'd bought his way into the Slytherin Quidditch team and the fact he'd called Kari a Mudblood.

Kari had attempted to give the ancient Egyptians swimming lessons as well, but those had gone over like a ton of lead bricks. It had been refreshing to go for a swim occasionally, even if they needed to use a warming charm to avoid freezing completely.

October had brought with it the arrival of Kisara and Tobias's eggs, horrible weather, Kaiba bankrupting the Malfoys completely, a promise to go to a Deathday Party and a rather irritable Yami thanks to something Kaiba had said about the Pharaoh's dislike of flying making him a lousy protector for Yugi.

Luckily they could do something about the last one, though the plan that had unfolded had been anything but sane, and had actually ended up, accidentally, earning Yami an, unwanted, place in the Quidditch squad as a reserve Seeker.

Halloween was when things had started getting bad again.

They'd gone to Nearly-Headless Nick's Deathday Party as promised, and had been on their way back when they'd been confronted by the sight of Flitch's cat, Mrs Norris, hanging petrified from a light fitting by her tail.

On the wall next to her, written as plain as day were the words "The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened! Enemies of the Heir, Beware!" in chicken blood.

Of course as the first ones on the scene, the gang were accused of doing the deed, though none of them had any clue what the Chamber of Secrets was.

Thanks to Draco's actions that night, they'd decided that Malfoy was the most likely suspect to be the 'Heir of Slytherin', so they'd started brewing Polyjuice Potion in order to get close to him and ask questions.

Of course long before the potion had been ready, Yugi and Harry had had to survive a Quidditch match against the Slytherins, which hadn't been made any easier by the fact that one of the bludgers had been fixated on Harry, while Bakura had spent the majority of the game trying to make sure the other one took Yugi's head off.

Harry had come out of that one with a broken arm, which had swiftly become a boneless arm and they shared several cracked ribs between them, necessitating another hospital wing visit.

It turned out the bludger that had chased Harry around all game had been hexed by a House Elf by the name of Dobby in order to get Harry sent home injured, to save him from whatever was inside the Chamber of Secrets. Dobby had wanted the Mutous to go home just as badly but couldn't attack them for fear that his master would be blamed by the Pharaoh and injured because of it.

There was one other thing to add on the time line for that day. That was the day the first, human, victims of the creature were found, petrified, in the corridor - Colin Creevey and Rebecca Hawkins.

The next day they'd started brewing the potion.

The first week in December was next on her list, as with it came the hatching of Kisara and Tobias' eggs. None of the hatchlings had been exact replicas of their parents, though the Red Eyes Charcoal-Black and the Blue Eyes Egg-White Dragons were the closest in tone, though the Purple Eyes Silver Dragons were pretty in their own ways.

Then there had been the disaster of the 'Duelling Club'. She decided to define that it hadn't been a Duel Monsters type of Duelling Club, but one that taught students how to fight using magic, or at least that was the general idea.

What had actually happened was that Yugi had got paired with Bakura, Harry with Draco, and Yami with Seto, causing all sorts of fun and games when they'd started 'practising', which had only been made worse when Bakura had summoned a snake, Yugi had frozen up and Harry had told the snake to go away.

In front of the whole school.

Naturally, this instantly put him at the top of everyone's lists to be the Heir of Slytherin, it being a trait that the founder had been well known for.

The next day had been a black day for the group. There had been another attack, and Nearly-Headless Nick, Justin Finch-Finely and Yami had all been petrified.

Yugi had gone into shock and had to be escorted to the hospital wing by Joey, while Harry had been taken to Professor Dumbledore's office for a chat.

Nothing had come of it, luckily, and by the time Harry had returned to his friends, Yugi had been talking again, but everyone who knew the teen well knew that he was miserable.

It didn't help that the majority of the castle believed that Harry had attacked the students (with Bakura going so far as to ask if Harry could petrify the other Mutou 'twin' to make his life easier), but it had helped the group that Gred and Forge… Fred and George had been escorting Harry everywhere chanting, "Make way for the Heir of Slytherin! Seriously evil wizard coming through!", taking the mick out of the fact the school was convinced that Harry was evil.

Christmas that year had seen the common room empty except for them, as everyone had fled at the first opportunity, and, while it hadn't been their most enjoyable Christmas, the Polyjuice potion had finished brewing on Christmas morning and had worked, even if they hadn't needed it in the end as Yugi had Shadow Gamed Draco, getting the information they'd needed and, when Draco had cheated and lost, he had been unable to act directly against the gang.

Draco hadn't been the Heir of Slytherin.

When Kari had returned to the school after Christmas, it had been with the news that she'd had a visitor named Shadi over the Christmas holidays, and that he'd be going to visit Yugi and Yami during the summer holidays.

Next was... Hermione quickly scanned the files and the rough time line, checking the dates matched up… the diary. Tom Riddle's diary, which had been flushed down the toilet through Moaning Myrtle, who had flooded her bathroom in response.

Then the escape and recapture of the baby dragons. That had, actually been fun, especially catching Pudding, who had decided to dive bomb the dinner tables, coating everyone in pudding.

By the time Lockheart had announced his Valentine's Day scheme, Yugi had taken to skipping his class in order to avoid ending up in another Shadow Game and the wielder of the Millennium Puzzle had spent all of Valentine's Day in hiding after all his fan mail had finally caught up with him.

While the others were discussing their futures, Harry and Yugi discovered how the diary, which had previously been empty, would reply to anything written within.

As the diary of Tom Riddle, it had been around when the Chamber of Secrets had first opened, so they had asked it about that and found out that Hagrid had been accused of opening the chamber the last time, which was why he'd been expelled from Hogwarts and had his wand snapped.

Though it wasn't on the time line, Hermione could remember how, as the new year had progressed, Yugi had withdrawn further and further into himself, slipping horribly out of balance as he missed his dark. It hadn't been made any better by the theft of the diary and the petrification of Hermione, Kari and Kaiba.

Everything she had noted down after that came from second hand accounts of what had happened, but they'd been filled in well enough by the others that Hermione felt that she could fill the time line in well enough, starting with how, that afternoon, Hagrid had been taken to Azkaban and Dumbledore had been forced out of his position as Headmaster of the school.

Coming towards the end of the school year, while they were still waiting for the mandrake roots to be ready so the antidote could be brewed, Joey, Ron and Harry decided to follow Hagrid's cryptic clue of 'follow the spiders' and gone into the Forbidden Forest.

It was official. Joey now hated spiders… well, Acromantulas at least.

They didn't have a chance to analyse the information they had gathered for a while though, as a prank war broke out around the school that caused chaos and mayhem and broke up all sorts of regular schedules.

Which was why it wasn't until Ginny had been taken into the Chamber that they finally realised that the dead girl was Myrtle. It was the same day they finally discovered the piece of paper Hermione had been holding when she'd been petrified, telling them that the beast was in fact a basilisk, a giant serpent like creature that had been using the pipes to get around.

They basically kidnapped Lockheart and got him to come with them, not that he'd proved much use, in fact he'd ended up splitting the group in two when he blew himself up trying to use Ron's wand to erase their memories of the whole incident.

Harry and Yugi had gone to face down the Heir of Slytherin and his basilisk alone.

The Heir had proved faster at wand work than Yugi and had knocked the Prince – no, wait, Yugi hadn't held that title yet – unconscious, and had spent time gloating at Harry instead of taking the opportunity to take him out while Yugi was down, gloating about how he was Lord Voldemort's past.

Harry stood up to him until Fawkes arrived bearing the Sorting Hat, his song waking Yugi up in time for the basilisk to arrive and then it had been the two of them, armed only with Gryffindor's sword, against a giant black snake.

Hermione had asked for details, but again they hadn't been able to provide much other than that Harry had managed to kill the snake and Yugi had destroyed the diary.

After that, all that was left was the clean-up. Lucius Malfoy had told Harry to pass on a threat to Yugi's life before going on to adopt yami-no-Bakura, Yami had seemed shocked his hikari would Shadow Game anyone and Yami had admitted to almost being sorted into Slytherin like Harry, but none of that needed to go into the histories other than, maybe, as a side note.

As exams were cancelled, the last few weeks passed quite blissfully and then of course it was back on the train and time to split up for the summer again.

And once again Hermione was nowhere near her friends when everything had gone wrong. This was making her job as archivist somewhat frustrating.

They hadn't been back a week before Shadi had visited the Mutou household and dropped a bombshell on the Pharaoh and his partner. There was a war coming, the enemy would have control over the Shadows, and if Yami didn't want to end up back in the Puzzle for another five thousand years, Yugi should stay out of it, for if Yugi was killed, Yami wouldn't be able to complete his destiny.

In hindsight, it was foolish, but when Anubis had attacked them just a couple of weeks later, leaving Yugi and Yami in hospital, they had thought that Shadi's prophesy had been fulfilled.

Anubis had possessed Seto, then proceeded in separating Yugi's, Joey's and Kari's souls from their bodies and trapping them within the Millennium Puzzle. He then drained Yami and Seto's life forces and nearly killed Yami in his duel against the Pharaoh. When that hadn't worked, he had turned into a giant jackal and attempted to blast them with blasts of dark fire.

Yugi had saved Yami's life by protecting his dark from the flames but had been burned badly in doing so. It had taken every ounce of effort Yugi could muster to stay on his feet, let alone help Yami, but he had managed it and Anubis had been destroyed for good, along with the Pyramid of Light…

Hermione made a note to look into the Orb and the Pyramid's histories and see if there was a link there. She hadn't seen it, but Joey had mentioned that Yugi's back was heavily scarred because of that battle.

By the time Yugi and Yami had come out of hospital, Harry had run away from the Dursley's because of an accident with his magic, Kari had been put on probation at work and Kari, Ombre and Joey had visited the Dursley house. They were concerned because they hadn't heard from Harry and were worried about a repeat of the previous year's events, where Harry had been locked in his room by his family. They scared Harry's family silly.

As if that wasn't enough, they day before they'd been due to return to England, Lucius Malfoy, who by that point had been almost completely financially ruined by Seto, had gone after the CEO of Kaiba Corp and attempted to murder him with the killing curse.

The attempt had failed, but Lucius was sentenced to a stay in the Japanese wizarding prison.

The next day, while they'd been staying at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry had been informed by Mr Weasley, that the serial killer Sirius Black, had escaped from Azkaban and was going to try and kill him.

This was the reason given for the Dementors that had been 'guarding' the train, but had in fact assaulted it in their search for Sirius.

No one in the Clan liked Dementors, for many reasons, one of which was their ability to bring someone's worst memories to the surface while feeding off the happiness and hope of humans.

Between the Care of Magical Creatures lessons, where Hagrid had been assisted by Bakura, the monsters managing to get into their own troubles, a second round of dragon eggs, and training for the new Quidditch season, they'd managed to avoid getting into too much trouble.

Of course there was the minor issue of Kari being pregnant with Joey's child (and Hermione had no idea when that had happened), but no one had thought about the implications of what would have happened if Kari had carried to term, and in any case Bakura had put paid to that idea. He'd dragged Kari into a Shadow Game and she had been unable to protect herself. Kari had nearly died, leaving her incapable of feeding the growing life-force of her child and resulting in a miscarriage.

Only Ryou's interference had prevented Bakura's death at the hands of Joey and the Pharoah, the child of light showing his dark just how far he had fallen.

Kari hadn't come out of hospital until Halloween, just in time for Sirius Black to break into the school. All the students had ended up sleeping in the Great Hall over night.

The man had escaped again, but it had been enough to put everyone on edge. The year had proceeded to get worse from there as the Dementors had invaded a Quidditch match, causing Harry to fall off of his broom. Yugi had saved Harry and Yami had sent three Dementors to the Shadow Realm in retribution.

That they had lost the match wasn't truly relevant, but pique made Hermione note it in the file anyway.

There had been minor, and unusual, spats between Yugi and Yami because the Pharaoh had been hiding things from his hikari, and Harry had been given the Marauder's Map by the Weasley twins, but nothing else major happened after that until Harry had found out that the man who had betrayed his parents was his Godfather.

That Christmas, Yugi was called to Egypt to meet the couple who claimed to be his parents. They were lying, but they had been working on the same dig site and brought warning of a group seeking information on the Millennium Items. Harry had also received the rather suspect Firebolt, resulting in an argument between Hermione and the rest of the group.

Harry and Bakura had started anti-dementor lessons at the start of the spring term, resulting in an argument between them and the Pharaoh.

The fallout of that disagreement had seen that Yugi outside thinking when he witnessed Bakura going into the Forbidden Forest alone.

Yugi being Yugi, had gone in after him, worried that either Ryou was going to get into danger, or Bakura was going to cause trouble, and, when the Tomb Robber had been attacked by Dementors, Yugi, unlike his dark, had been unable to stand by and watch.

If the Duel Monsters hadn't intervened when they had, both Bakura and Yugi would have lost their souls to the creatures.

As it was there had been a fight between Yugi and Yami that had ended with Yami lashing out with his magic in an uncontrollable burst of rage, causing him to instantly become the most disliked person around as he refused to admit what had really happened and that the magic had escaped his grip.

He hadn't meant to attack Yugi, it had just happened. The magic lashing out had been a complete accident.

Then February had come and Yami, who had been avoiding the gang like crazy, quit the Quidditch team because Oliver had given him and Yugi an ultimatum which had basically consisted of "get your act together or get out of here". Yami had chosen to get out of there rather than risk the magic getting away from him again.

Then there had been another Quidditch match, Gryffindor verses Ravenclaw, and another Shadow Game, again between Yami and Bakura.

And Sirius Black had broken in again, this time getting into the Gryffindor tower and nearly, they had assumed, killed Ron, having gone to, they thought, the wrong bed. Yugi had had a brief confrontation with the mass murderer, but luckily had come out of it unscathed.

Yami wasn't the only one having trouble controlling the Shadows. Sensing that her magic was getting out of hand, Kari had retreated from a brawl in the corridors only to shred her dormitory as soon as her control relaxed even slighty.

Hermione paused, considering whether to include the incident with Yami's pilot cat, though that was, at best a small detail. The fraying tempers and wild magic definitely needed to be fleshed out but she needed more information from the people involved than "the Shadows were going crazy and we managed to make a deal with them". Even now, she was having trouble getting more information than that. Yami didn't really want to talk about it, Yugi had been so tired by that point that his memory was swiss cheesed, and she couldn't bring herself to ask Ombre.

And it wasn't like she could ask Ryou, who was in another country, or Bakura who had recently tried to kill her and quite possibly died himself.

The end of term. Right. If she didn't note that Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup that year, she'd never hear the end of it. The fact Yami had started training Yugi properly in how to use his Shadow Magic definitely needed to be mentioned because it led into the next major event on the time line, not including the accident with the Apparaître spell that had generated much larger monsters than normal, or the prophecy that had been spouted by Trelawney, which were both on the list but as minor events.

No, the major events came as a clump all together, just after exams as per usual.

The first thing that had happened was when Mahado had asked Yugi to release the Dementors from the Shadow Realm. The hikari had done so only to have the Shadows recognise him as Yami's heir, the Dementors escape, and the Duel Monsters vanish. Yugi had collapsed shortly afterwards from the effort of closing the door behind the Dementors to stop the Shadows from piggy-backing out into the human world.

Then the Minister for Magic had appeared at the school, hunting dragons. They'd had to leave Yami tending Yugi to go and warn the colony, since Kisara's children hadn't vanished with their parents during the unsealing of the Dementors.

It was on the way back that Ron was attacked by a huge black dog and dragged away, causing the others to go after him through the tunnel underneath the Whomping Willow. At the other end, they had been told the truth about Sirius Black's actions all those years ago, when Harry's parents had been killed.

Sirius hadn't been the traitor, Peter Pettigrew had. The the rat animagus had set Black up to take the fall and escaped into the sewers, living with the Weasley family until Sirius had escaped and had talked the cats into helping him catch the rat that didn't smell like a rat. How the fact that one rat had lived for over twelve years had escaped the entire Weasley family escaped Hermione completely.

So they'd taken Pettigrew in and handed him over to the Headmaster and the Minister.

Oh... she needed to put down that Lucius Malfoy had escaped from the Japanese prison, but she needed to look up when that had actually happened.

There had been that letter from Industrial Illusions, but that was merely foreshadowing. Sirius had turned himself in a week after Pettigrew's capture, Lupin had been outed as a werewolf around the same time and forced to resign from his position as a Professor.

The last major event of the school year came just before they boarded the Hogwarts Express, when the students getting on the train came under attack from vengeful Dementors, furious about Yami's 'assault' on their own.

Yugi had shielded most of the students against the assault and by the time the Dementors had managed to overwhelm Yugi's powers there had been backup arriving in the form of the Professors.

Harry, with the help of Professors McGonagall, Dumbledore, Flitwick and Sprout, had managed to drive the Dementors away, and the Professors had travelled with the train to prevent a second attempt on the lives of the students.

Sirius had managed to get a note to them via an owl that he was giving to Ron and, once at Kings Cross, the group split ways. Harry went to the Dursleys for the last time, Hermione and Ron off home. The others headed to Gatwick to board Kaiba's plane, leaving Yami, Yugi and Joey in America during the stopover.

So much had happened that summer that Hermione was certain she had yet to get the full details. All she knew was that while she'd been in a placement at Industrial Illusions, Seto, Mokuba and Ombre had gone missing, leaving Kari struggling to keep Kaiba Corp afloat, the Dementors had attacked again, Yugi's soul had been stolen, Harry had run away to America to help his friends, Yami had gone temporarily insane and the whole group except Ron and Hermione had ended up stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere, having beaten the bad guy but having had no way back off of the island.

They'd been 'rescued' by the American Ministry who had thrown them in jail for multiple crimes, including trespassing, kidnapping, impersonating a famous person and possession of another person's body.

The main complication, once they had been absolved by the British consul, was that the ritual intended to put Yami's spirit back into his body has instead resulted in him being put into his original body due to the phrasing of the spell. Fortunately, it had not only teleported said body to them, but rejuvenated it. Hermione still had the occasional nightmare of attending class with a Yami-mummy.

There had been a couple of weeks between their release from jail and the next major event, the Quidditch World Cup and during that time little had happened. A couple of shopping trips, many conversations, a few letters sent out but nothing of great import.

Unlike everything that had happened at the Quidditch World Cup.

Bulgaria had lost to Ireland in the finals of the World Cup, but that hadn't been the main event. The match had been overshadowed by the fact that the Death Eaters had attacked the camp. Yugi, Joey, Seto, Kari and Ombre had joined in the fighting, using their dragons while Yami had looked after the younger members of the group.

They'd briefly met up with Serenity at the camp site, but long enough for Joey to get some information so he could send letters to his sister during term time, then they'd been invited to stay with the Weasleys until school kicked off. Kari, Ombre and Mokuba went back to Japan for a couple of days with Seto, in order to get Kaiba Corp into some form of order before the school year started, while Tea and Tristan had stayed at the Weasley household overnight before their flights separated them from their friends again.

Then it was back to Hogwarts for their fourth and most dangerous year yet, The Triwizard Tournament. Even before it kicked off a lot had happened on the school grounds.

For one, the group had decided to start training on the mornings before class. Running, fighting, exercise, anything to get them fitter and give them an edge as most Wizards didn't think of using any other methods than with wands to fight.

For another Kari's old friend, Robyn Golden, had taken a position at the school in order to work on her masterpiece, the magical equivalent of a dissertation.

Yugi, at Ryou's behest, had lifted the penalty on Draco, as the teen was never going to learn his lesson and without the ability to approach the gang, the Ring was gaining more and more control over the young wizard.

Unfortunately the first thing Draco had done with his new freedom was Shadow Game Harry. He won, but was so mentally and magically exhausted he had collapsed, causing his friends to fear for his soul.

Because of the way the Puzzle had interacted with Harry during Yugi's absence, Yami had withdrawn into the Puzzle and gone through the Puzzle into Harry's mind. There, he aided the teen in his recovery by helping Harry build his mental defences and kicking the fragment of Voldemort's soul that had been living inside Harry out and into the Shadow Realm.

This, somehow, had the knock-on effect of linking Harry to the Puzzle, the same way Yugi was.

Between the Shadow Game and Harry waking up was 'The Ferret Incident', something Hermione wasn't sure had to be in the time line but did amuse Joey and Ron every time it was mentioned, so it stayed.

Then there had been their first lesson with Professor Moody, who had been an Auror during the last war. He had introduced them to the three unforgivable curses, all of which they had met before individually.

Yami had had a minor spat with Dumbledore, after Harry had woken up, over the way someone had been treating Harry's mind like a revolving door. All he managed to achieve was to earn himself three weekends in detention.

By the time those were over, Kari and Hermione had finished the locator beacons, which they'd made in an attempt to prevent a repeat of everyone getting lost over the summer, and handed out the evening of Yami's last detention.

At the end of October, the other schools arrived for the Triwizard Tournament. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, along with their candidates for Champion.

Kari and Joey had put their names in for Hogwarts, along with Cedric Diggory for Hufflepuff and a few others. Yami would have done but, of course, his reduced age had taken him out of the running, and the gang had watched nervously as the Goblet had announced the Champions.

Viktor Krum for Durmstrang.

Fleur Delacour for Beuxbatons.

Kari Ironhide for Hogwarts.

And then, somehow, Harry's name had also come out, forcing him to compete through some twisted logic that was almost certainly Dumbledore's fault.

Ron managed to successfully distance himself from the group completely after that by acting like a complete idiot and not listening to what his friends had to say.

Then there had been a defining incident that had changed the way that they all thought:

Petunia and Vernon Dursley had been killed. Dudley had survived because he hadn't been home at the time, but his parents had both died. The wards on the Dursley house had failed when Harry had run away to help his friends in America and they'd had nothing to protect them from the Death Eaters.

Sirius, who had already acquired guardianship over Harry took Dudley on as well after the funeral, meaning that the cousins would have to live together during the holidays.

Yet another run in with Draco and Bakura Malfoy later, Kari and Harry had had their Wand Weighing Ceremony and been badgered no end by the press, who Kari had hated anyway and had ended up in about ten to twenty photos.

They had also met Rita Skeeter who, with only a few words, managed to annoy even Dumbledore.

When they'd come down to dinner that evening, Seto had startled them all by asking Kari to the Yule Ball, which had started the dating game. Hermione had the rules written somewhere, and the ones for the girls' version, but she couldn't find them. It was probably a good thing, they didn't need their children reading these books and getting any ideas later on down the line.

She did mention the vision Yugi and Joey had had thanks to the Millennium Necklace though, the one about the maze and Harry and Kari disappearing...

If only they'd been more proactive in doing something about that... Hermione regretted that they hadn't been able to stop what had happened.

They had all gotten a laugh out of the Rita Skeeter article that had introduced the idea of a Granger Potter Ironhide love triangle, although Kari had been furious that anyone would accuse her of paedophilia. She had been mollified by a reminder of the Mutou Valentine Wheeler love triangle that had been circulated by the press a few years back that had also been completely false.

The Duel Monsters had managed to find their way back to the human world not long after that, guided by Boh, who had 'badgered' Kisara (as much as a Kuriboh could badger a Blue Eyes White Dragon) into telling him how she'd managed to get through to help her partner.

Then Mahado and Mana had had a surprise in the form of a baby daughter, who they named Nakia.

The trips to Hogsmead with their 'dates' had been fun, if a little crazy on occasion, but Hermione had had to admit that spending some time with Viktor Krum had been interesting and had given her a chance to learn another language.

The first task was the next major event: Dragons. Not, thankfully, dragon slaying, but egg thieving was hazardous enough in its own right.

Kari's tactic had been to chain the dragon down using a version of the 'Incarceous' spell that conjured chains rather than ropes. She had been partially successful, until the dragon's tail had escaped the chains and struck her on the shoulder. She had, however, managed to get the egg before then.

Harry's tactic, accidentally recommended by Yami, was to go a rather different route and summon his broomstick and out fly the dragon, irritating it constantly until it took off to try to chase him and then dive down and grab the egg.

Harry's trick ended with only slightly fewer injuries.

It had been after the first task, but before the Yule Ball that Hermione and Kari had introduced the idea of 'Clan' to the others.

Concerned that Harry's next of kin, if anything happened to Sirius, were in fact Draco and Bakura Malfoy, the girls had looked into ways of making sure someone they knew or liked got guardianship of any children of the family whose parents or guardians had died.

And they had found the 'Clan Law', by which a bunch of magical families could come together under one banner and look after any children of the other Clan families legally.

It was complicated to explain but basically gave them some rights within the nations that the Clan members were from, making their 'pick on one, deal with us all' reaction more understandable, and basically made it so, while they weren't family in a literal sense, they were considered next of kin to any of the other Clan families.

They'd worked out what the next task was just before Christmas and how they were going to deal with it, but before the task of being underwater for an hour came along, they had the much scarier Yule Ball to deal with.

Serenity had been allowed to come over 'in the interest of fairness to foreign students' as she was a witch, and she had spent the night going between Joey's friends, dancing with them, while the others had danced with their own dates in-between turns with Serenity.

Not that that had been the only thing they'd gotten up to over Christmas. Serenity had arrived on Christmas Eve and by Boxing Day there had been the opening of the presents, including the cartouche for Yami that had turned out so important...

Hermione wasn't sure whether to correct Yami's name in her notes to his real one. On one hand she'd known him as Yami for as long as she'd known him but on the other hand he'd had to fight so hard to get his real name back...

Then there had been the huge snowball fight and the deep discussion between Joey and Yugi that didn't need to be documented as it had been a rather private and possibly very important conversation.

And then it had been the Yule Ball, where Hermione had managed to stun all her year mates with how gorgeous she looked and a brawl between Harry and Draco had ended up with Bakura escorting the other Malfoy out of the Great Hall while Rebecca and Harry took Luna to the hospital wing, leaving Serenity dancing with Yugi for the rest of the night.

New Year's Eve had seen something rather interesting happen.

Ron had turned around to the group and apologised for the way he'd been acting over the last couple of months. With everyone's temper cool for the first time in a while, Ron had been given a second chance, understanding that things could be said in the heat of the moment and, the others wouldn't admit they had been wrong to rally around Harry, they could understand why Ron had been mad.

The thing with Yugi and Joey and the Skeeter article didn't really need to be put in, even if it had been funny to see Yami hit Joey around the head with a newspaper for paying attention to the report of the 'blossoming romance between Yugi Mutou and Serenity Wheeler'.

The fact Yugi had been kidnapped, along with Hermione, Yami and Ombre did though.

The night before the task, Hermione had given Kari and Harry dreamless sleep potions in order to let them get a good night's sleep, since the night before the first task neither had slept well, then left the common room with Professor McGonagall.

Yugi had gone out to check on Boh, because of a run in with the Slytherins and Yami had gone after Ombre, who had left the common room after she'd admitted to the others that she wasn't Kari's dark side, when Yami had sensed Yugi drop off of the map and, justifiably worried, had run for the Monsters' Wing.

That was the last thing the Pharaoh remembered until he'd been woken up in the Shrieking Shack by a concerned Joey and Sirius.

Turned out that Yugi, Ombre and Hermione had been needed to play hostage for Harry, Kari and Viktor and they'd had to knock the Pharaoh out to stop him from going berserk at anyone.

Of course no one had known until the task had already started and they'd gone into the water. Harry had chosen to use Gillyweed, while Kari had transfigured a rock into a dolphin to help her free dive in the lake, getting her to the bottom quickly and giving her about a minute before she needed to surface.

Kari had grabbed Ombre, who had remained unconscious until she'd surfaced, and would have gone back down for one of the others, had she not been stopped by the merpeople and had had to wait until Krum had gotten back with Hermione. Harry had brought Yugi up last, bringing Fleur's hostage with him.

Of course everyone had been furious about it but what they hadn't realised, and were never likely to be told, was that Yugi and Hermione had been quite willing participants - though Yugi hadn't expected them to kidnap and drug his dark side when he'd mentioned that they'd have to tell the Pharaoh and he didn't know if Yami would let him risk his life like that.

Nor had they expected them to kidnap Ombre like they had.

That evening, once Yami had calmed down, they signed the papers and officially became Clan for the first time. The Domino Clan, "together we're stronger than when we are apart..."

Oh there had been a few unexpected side effects. Like the addition of those who they owed life debts to, which, unfortunately, included Bakura, but it had been done and they had become a close knit group because of it.

Another Skeeter article, this time about Astraea, Yami's date, being a gold digger (which was impossible considering the lack of money within the Mutou household), later, the Clan started researching and learning offensive spells for the maze that was coming.

Between that and the Kaiba Corp sponsored Duel Monsters Tournament with a trip to India as the prize, they were kept rather busy.

Mr Crouch went missing around the time the maze had finished growing. He'd staggered onto the school grounds, and asked to see Dumbledore and when someone had gone to get the Headmaster there had been an attack and Crouch had gone missing.

They'd gone to Dumbledore about the visions from the Necklace but the Headmaster hadn't done much about it, trusting his friend Moody to get the cup in place safely.

The only other major event before the finals of the Triwizard and Duel Monsters tournaments was when the Millennium Items had been stolen from Yugi.

Exhausted after a rather late detention, Yugi had left his bag unattended in the classroom and, though Ron had slipped out of the common room to get it for him, when it had turned up the next morning, it had been missing the Millennium Items which had lived inside for the last four years.

Bakura, of course, had been annoyed at missing such an opportune moment. His words to that effect and obvious frustration had proved to the Pharaoh that he hadn't stolen them.

The entire school had been turned upside down and yet they still hadn't been found.

Around the same time as this had happened, the bloodline potion that Robyn had suggested to find out exactly who had been accepted by the magic during the Clan ritual had been ready so they'd sorted that out and had a couple of nasty surprises.

They'd also locked Yugi and Yami in one of the rooms at the top of Dragon Tower where the Purple Eyes Silver Dragons lived to sort themselves out and get some food and sleep, which they had been denying themselves in their search for the missing Millennium Items.

And if anyone could explain where the insanity that had been the following morning, after they'd locked the Pharaoh and the Prince in the tower for the night, had come from Hermione would be surprised.

It had basically gone from a Duel against two rivals to an all out war in less than a couple of hours and had only ended when Seto and Yugi had lost to Joey and Yami.

Professor Dumbledore had put all the houses on minus points and had refused to hand out the House Cup that year because of it, but they'd mostly gotten away with it.

Then the finals of the Duel Monsters tournament and the Triwizard Tournament finals had come along.

Joey had knocked Astraea out of the game and claimed the prize as his own in the Duel Monsters tournament.

And Harry and Kari had gotten through the maze and touched the Triwizard Cup at the same time, being transported to a graveyard where Kari had been killed.

By Peter Pettigrew who had escaped from Azkaban with a little help from Voldemort's other helper, Lucius Malfoy.

Voldemort had regained a body and Harry had narrowly escaped with his life, calling his Duel Monster partner to him for the first time. He barely escaped, bringing Kari's body back with him when he used the Triwizard Cup portkey to get back to Hogwarts.

More shocks awaited them at the castle, however. Professor Moody wasn't Professor Moody at all, but had in fact been Barty Crouch Jr. who had been working for Voldemort the whole time. It was he who had organised Harry's entrance into the tournament.

Ombre had had a set to with Fudge, the Minister for Magic and Wolf had settled down quite quickly once his human was no longer being poked and prodded.

Afterwards had been that horrible week where the gang had tried to support each other while the funeral arrangements had been made. Then it had been time to say farewell.

Hermione didn't remember much from that time and it hurt too much to try to. Kari had been her best friend, so for the woman to be killed... It hurt. So much...

Then the gang had split up again, albeit in not as many directions this year. Harry wasn't forced back to the Dursleys, but still at a time when they could have done with sticking together they had had no choice but to go their separate ways for the summer holidays.

At least they'd discovered that Robyn had recovered the missing Millennium Items.

They'd had their holiday in India, or at three quarters of it, as, during the other quarter, they'd been trapped in a Shadow Game in a world revolving around the game of Capsule Monsters or been being looked after by the medical team brought by Kaiba when he'd come looking for the others.

Hermione once again needed more detail, but from what she knew during that Shadow Game Yugi had ended up leading the party due to events beyond his control, and in getting them through the trials and managing to fight off Alexander the Great on his own Yami had realised that Yugi could in fact hold his own now and that the hikari didn't necessarily need Yami to stick around. If you asked Yugi though, he definitely wanted Yami around - but he also wanted the Pharaoh to start thinking about himself more, rather than bowing to Yugi's wishes all the time.

And so, as the tablet of the Pharaoh had been brought to Japan on a request sent before Voldemort had returned Yami had decided to go and get his memories back.

And Hermione, who had been taken to Japan by her parents after a few sleepless nights while they'd been missing again had been taken along for the ride when Yami had been pulled into the world of his memories. She, Yugi and Joey had gone after him to help against Bakura. The thief-king was also in the memory world – but unlike the pharaoh, retained all of his memories from the last time around.

Seto, who had been looking for the Tomb Robber after Bakura had attacked Mokuba the night before hadn't had a choice in the matter. He had ended up inside the Millennium Puzzle with them.

While they'd been inside the Puzzle seeking a way into the memory world to find Yami's true name, Yami had been thrown into his role as Pharaoh and had met his old friends Mahado and Mana, the former of whom had died at Bakura's hands (as far as the Pharaoh had been aware) and become the Dark Magician that still aided him in Yugi's time.

Seto had had a run in with Seth, his pre-incarnation, and finally been given proof that there had been a priest in Yami's court that had looked like him. And Seto had met Kisara, the woman who had become the Blue Eyes White Dragon that protected him in the modern age.

Of course it hadn't all been happiness and light.

There had been Zorc…

A Shadow Demon who had made a pact with the original creators of the Millennium Items, he hadn't liked it when Yugi had interfered with the events that had been supposed to pass.

So he'd reversed time and Kaiba had ended up in a Duel with a Zorc controlled Bakura, while Yami had been fighting for his-

LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN

"Damn." Hermione murmured as her laptop died, hunting out the charger for it. She'd been so caught up in compiling notes and writing extra things in that she hadn't noticed the little light flickering until the laptop had switched itself off.

"You ready, Hermione?" Gillian, her mother asked, looking up from her suitcase as Hermione plugged her laptop in to charge.

Hermione was confused for a moment then she nodded, having forgotten about what was going on today. "Sure, Mum, just let me grab my stuff." She picked up her wand, putting it in one of her pockets, her deck, which went in the pouch at her side that had been one of the many things left to her by Kari, and quickly put on her shoes. "Ok, ready."

Her mother nodded approvingly, looking her daughter over, "Let's go. I'm sure the others are already there."

"Uh huh." Hermione grabbed her backpack on the way out of the door, "I know Seto's been looking forward to a chance to show off his new theme park, so he and Mokuba are already going to be there, and most of the others were competing in Seto's tournament."

"Which you're going to miss if we don't go now, because the opening ceremony is in a quarter of an hour and it'll take us ten minutes to get to the park." Adrian, Hermione's father, teased, well aware that she wouldn't have missed it for the world.

"I'm coming, I'm coming." Hermione waved her father's teasing off, grinning at him as she did so. "After all," Her father passed her Duel Disk over to her, "If I'm going to stand any chance of competing against my friends, I need to be at the tournament."

"When I asked you to get involved in something other than reading, I didn't expect it to be a magical card game." Her mother sighed as they reached the taxi rank.

"I could go back to my books." Hermione teased, "I mean I did just get to an interesting part in my notes…"

"No, no, anything that gets you out of the house and into the sun is a good thing." Her father shook his head, ushering her into a taxi, "Right, love?" He asked Gillian who just gave her husband a bemused look. The shoe had been on the other foot until he'd realised that Hermione wasn't dating any of her (much older) male friends.

"I suppose. Just try not to get into any trouble, ok?" Gillian looked at her daughter sharply, having looked at Hermione's notebooks while helping her daughter transfer what was in them to the laptop.

"I'll be careful. I promise."


End file.
